Raymond+E.+Showery

Abortionist Raymond Edward Showery was born Sept. 14, 1928 in Houston, Texas to Syrian immigrant Charles Showery and nurse Theo Roberts Showery. He worked a variety of jobs before graduating from Texas A&M, at one point wrestling under the name "The Chinese Bandit." He graduated from U.T. Galveston Medical School and served in the the U.S. Navy.

It's not clear when he decided to turn his hand to abortion, but when he did so, he did so with great abandon, opening a private hospital in El Paso. Called Southside Medical Clinic or Family Hospital of El Paso, is was exposed as a sordid practice where gestational ages were fudged in both directions, either to charge more or to claim that the abortion was being performed within legal limits.

He was convicted of fraud, which he committed by keeping insurance reimbursements for patients who had paid up-front for care, as well as for running an unlicensed child-placement facility. He was arrested for attempting to run two //El Paso Times// reporters off the road in 1981 while they were doing an expose on his abortion business.

In 1983, Showery was convicted of murder in the death of a 5 or 6-month baby that he suffocated after she survived an abortion on Jul. 28, 1979. Though police could not find the baby's body or the mother's medical records, seven of his employees testified that he had first tried to suffocate the baby with her placenta, then drown her in a bucket of fluid, before finally tying her up in a plastic bag.

Shower was out on bail appealing the murder conviction when he performed the [|safe, legal abortion] that killed 28-year-old Mickey Apodaca. Mickey, a divorced mother of four, went to Showery's Southside Medical Center in El Paso for an abortion in April of 1984. He was arrested on manslaughter charges the next day and held pending a $million bond. Showery's defense team said that Mickey was not bleeding excessively immediately after her abortion, but that a nurse discovered the hemorrhage, and Mickey was taken into the operating room for a transfusion. However, Showery would not provide Mickey's records to the Grand Jury on the grounds that they might incriminate him. It turns out that during the abortion, Showery had torn a hole in Mickey's uterus and severed a uterine artery. Mickey [|hemorrhaged] for two hours before she was transferred to a hospital, where she died during an emergency hysterectomy. The prosecution charged that Showery used inadequately trained staff, failed to properly treat the injuries he'd caused Mickey, delayed treatment, and delayed transfer to a hospital.


 * "Doctor Convicted in Fetus Death Gets 15-Year Texas Prison Term," //Omaha World Herald//, Sept. 29, 1983
 * "El Paso MD faces charge in death after abortion," //Dallas Morning News//, Apr. 18, 1984
 * "Abortion specialist held without bond," //Dallas Morning News//, Apr. 20, 1984
 * "Arraignment set in abortion -manslaughter case," //Dallas Morning News//, May 5, 1974
 * "Abortion doctor gets indictment in patient's death," //Mobile (AL) Register//, May 4, 1984
 * "Doctor out on bond," //Mobile (AL) Register//, Oct. 5, 1983